The Song That Just Won’t Leave Me Alone

And the problem it seems
Is with you and me
Not the Love who came
To repair everything

And I don’t know
What to do with a love like that
And I don’t know
How to be a love like that

What I really wish Blogger would do is create an application that allows me to determine the soundtrack you read this to. The collection of tunes for the last weeks posting is really cool. So … in case you feel really motivated.. you should line up these tracks on your iTunes and just soak in it for a while. Oh yes, you should. It will heal your soul. You should also drink a large and exceptionally fine single malt whisky no less than 12 years old (ht marko) and enjoy it under a dark black sky somewhere.

Soundtrack for the next few minutes of your life – my Christmas gift to you is 61.53 minutes of music for the Soul.

Catch Your Fall (Blow Out Your Candles) – David Yetton – 3.55min
Ran For Miles (Night On My Side) – Gemma Hayes – 4.32min
Naked As We Came (Our Endless Numbered Days) – Iron & Wine – 2.33min
West (West) – Lucinda Williams – 3.33min
Beside You (The Islander) – Dave Dobbyn – 3.43min
Won’t Give In (Everyone Is Here) – The Finn Brothers – 4.17min
Inside of Me (Real Life) – Evermore – 4.07min
Stall Out (Mutemath) – Mutemath – 7.10min
Colorblind (Cruel Intentions) – Counting Crows – 3.26min
Stable Song (Plans) – Death Cab For Cutie – 3.43min
No Ordinary Thing (You Are Here) – Opshop – 4.06min
Two Places At A Table (Last Fair Deal) – Rory Block – 3.38min
Ez (Music For The Morning After) – Pete Yorn – 4.42min
My Lover’s Prayer (Unknown) – Otis Redding – 3.12min
Ágætis byrjun (Ágætis byrjun) – Sigur Rós – 7.56min

Responsiveness In Mass Communication
Had an interesting meeting today with the new young adults guy at church, who also has responsbility for Sunday night services. Talked a lot about my observations over the past four weeks and the experimentation that we’ve been doing, the responses to it as well. The energy in the room has been at an all time low – people simply not engaging at any point in the service. The rise in room atmosphere has been happening around the notices – usually where there is a bit of comedy just in people doing their thing. The atmosphere relaxes and feels more personable. Consequently we’ve adopted some of this into our singing worship and seen a great response.

It was pretty obvious I was skating on some thin ice, which I can understand. After all, I live and breathe community gatherings, how to shape them into genuine and signficant experiences. I also don’t take it too seriously, and realise that there is room for safe experimentation. It’s going to be uncomfortable if I’m talking about things that they haven’t noticed or thought about in regards to the room. Right now there’s even confusion over what kind of atmosphere is the goal in the room. The ‘feeling’ around celebration even brings different things to the surface for different people. Still.. I brought it to the table, regardless of how it’s received. I offered to be on the frontline of doing something to make it work.

Yup, I’m still feeling about as frustrated as I was before. Lame-o. I think I need a holiday quickly followed by an attitude adjustment. From my perspective I think the basics would be to start with creating the kind of atmosphere that people can engage with, that energizes the room and helps buoy the whole thing along. Laughter is key, as is earnestness. Earnestness is not the same as seriousness. I think I put a serious foot in it when I commented on the overall tonality of the services finishing in the same low-frequency, mellow and reflective comtemplation. There is a space for it but it’s very difficult for some introverted comtemplatives to easily build spaces for energised, extroverted teenagers. I’m making some gross generalisations based on anecdotal observations… but I think the research would back me up. At least we could both acknowledge the absence of many that would formally have helped to shape our services.